Works News Office
Name:Woodland Crematorium II
Type:Culture/Public,
Location:Stockholm, Sweden
Year:2009
Quotation from the jury assessment


\"A Stone in the Forest is the entry which best understands
the wholeness of the Woodland Cemetery and listens to the
site with the greatest empathy. The project adds one more
character-laden part to the Woodland Cemetery experience. A
Stone in the Forest creates a journey in both an internal and an
external landscape.
The proposal A Stone in the Forest merges with the
Woodland Cemetery’s distinctive array of buildings without
repeating, imitating or even alluding to earlier buildings. It is
sui generis, characterised by a refined simplicity, a down-toearth
feeling of form, colour and weight, with an architecture
verging on the ascetic. The jury has attached importance to the experience of the
new crematory facility commencing, not at the entrance but at
a distance from it, somewhere along the surrounding paths. To
many visitors, the actual approach is an experience in which
grief and consolation must come together, and that experience
must be allowed to take a little time. In A Stone in the Forest,
the approach to the building is subdued, almost hesitant. The
forest has been made part of the experience. The building lies
secretive and compact, barely discernible from the forecourt.
Gradually the path towards the building turns away. Now the
forest thins out, the ground begins to be discreetly paved with
slabs, inviting those approaching the monolithic façade of the
building, with its distinct entrance beneath a wooden loggia.
The difference in level between the forecourt and the building
is nearly 3 metres, and one moves forwards but at the same
time also upwards, in the manner so typical of the Woodland
Cemetery.
The approach to the crematory building has here been
given a soft-spoken setting which accords with the general
ambience of the Woodland Cemetery. The short journey
through the woods is in this way reminiscent of the journey to
the Woodland Chapel. A Stone in the Forest is a scheme which
highlights the gentle values and, accordingly, the scheme
which succeeded best in finding its own key in the composite
voicing of the original work\"
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